I just started playing NL about 10 months ago. To this point I've played a traditional style, in which I wait for good hands, bet big with them preflop (to get HU as often as possible) and then making big bets on favorable boards. This works fine, although I find it incredibly boring and sometimes quite stressful because to win playing this way I've found you 1) have to play really, really tight because you are risking so much preflop with big bets, and 2) not make any serious mistakes (because making one big error can stack you). For a football analogy, I liken it to old school football (like Woody Hayes) where you run the ball 90% of the time and very occasionally do a big play action play (bluff). and as much we like to say that patience is a virtue, good players are patient and are content to fold fold fold, blah blah blah, the obvious fact is that most of us play worse when we are bored, and the game is not very fun or interesting.

I think it NL there are other styles that can win though. One style is more a negreanu-ish, small ball style, which I think would work especially well in live games because preflop 3 bets are so rare. This style is a very aggressive but small betting style, with very frequent opens (at least 20-25% or maybe more) to 2-2.5 bb. you always open the same amt whether you have suited connectors or big pairs. if there are limpers before you might open slightly bigger but not much. the goal with these opens isnt to get it HU, but just to gain initiative and make the pot slightly bigger. once multiway you continue making small bets when the board is at least somewhat favorable, just like you do in limit hold em. some advantages to this style

1) you can play more hands because you risk less pre and post
2) as long as you arent betting huge amts multiway (which you shouldnt really do anyway) this style is actually less stressful because ive found in live games that multiway pots are almost always "honest" where you dont have to worry about being bluffed or 2nd guessing. you just play pot odds.
3) people are generally fit or fold live. thus when you make small cbets or stabs at pots you have way more fold equity than you should.

for another football analogy, this is like replacing Woody Hayes style with a west coast offense, with lots of short passes (small bets) over and over to get medium chunks of yards.

of course this will only work when fairly deep, at least 150 bb im guessing. shortstacking wouldnt work.

anyone here experiment with this style before? because tbh on 2p2 i dont see a lot of threads where people take this approach.

I've seen people do really well with small ball poker. You've always got to be on your game, which can be tough if you're logging a lot of hours. You've also got to be really good at knowing when to apply pressure and when not to.

Part the problem is that players aren't fit or fold at low stakes; especially if you play a lot of hands. People will call you lighter. Plus, you'll end up value-owning yourself with weaker hands.

Plus, you bump up against the rake if you're playing marginal hands.

If I'm bored, and it's appropriate, and I'm playing well, I'll open up my starting ranges from the HJ, CO, and button.

I read Negreanu's book on small-ball. Thought it made sense. Tried to employ that style at small stakes. I didn't find that it worked well for me.

It's possible I was doing it wrong, especially post-flop, where I used to have a hard time folding hands that were strong pre-flop or on the flop, but could easily be beat on the turn or river. I often suffered from entitlement tilt.

I think it's challenging to employ that style at low-stakes, where the rake is a killer, and the player pool is already prone to calling too wide, because everyone wants to see the flop, and everyone thinks the guy opening lots of pots for a raise is often full of $hlt (and they're right).

I started playing what I considered to be a modified form of small ball - keeping my pre-flop open range a little wide, but raising bigger (more standard 4x-5x for low stakes live cash), but switching to a very TAG style post-flop, where I tried to be very disciplined about choosing the right hands to bet, and otherwise just playing defensively. I wasn't c-betting anywhere near the frequency Negreanu advocates. Instead, I'd be c-betting less often, but going bigger with my bet sizing.

That often worked well, and I still play that way to some extent, though I'm a little less LAG and a little more TAG pre, and a little more LAG, a little less TAG post-flop, since I moved up from 1/3 to 2/5. I still found that at 1/3, the player pool's propensity to call too wide both pre- and post-flop added a ton of variance.

It was really frustrating to raise with a good hand pre, value-bet flop and turn, and see that an opponent still sucked out on the river. Most people would say that's just normal variance, and I shouldn't be results-oriented. But I believe that a portion of that variance came from the fact that I was opening a lot of hands for a raise, without really considering the strength of my hand relative to my position, and that my opponents were adjusting by calling me down wider.

In the age of solvers and kids in their 20's having thousands of hours of experience playing online, I don't think a one-size-fits-all approach is ideal for low-stakes live cash games. I've found a lot of value in being able to quickly profile opponents' tendencies and playing styles, and making adjustments to exploit them.

I try to thread the needle between being GTO-balanced and playing exploitable when it's logically defensible, mixing in live reads and strong tells. I try to stay aware of how the table is reacting to my play, so I can change gears when the dynamics shift.